Are spread and upfurl’d;
In the stir of the forces
Whence issued the world.
III
A Farewell
My horse’s feet beside the lake,
Where sweet the unbroken moonbeams lay,
Sent echoes through the night to wake
Each glistening strand, each heath-fring’d bay.
The poplar avenue was pass’d,
And the roof’d bridge that spans the stream.
Up the steep street I hurried fast,
Led by thy taper’s starlike beam.
I came; I saw thee rise:—the blood
Came flushing to thy languid cheek.
Lock’d in each other’s arms we stood,
In tears, with hearts too full to speak.
Days flew: ah, soon I could discern
A trouble in thine alter’d air.
Thy hand lay languidly in mine—
Thy cheek was grave, thy speech grew rare.
I blame thee not:—this heart, I know,
To be long lov’d was never fram’d;
For something in its depths doth glow
Too strange, too restless, too untam’d.
And women—things that live and move
Min’d by the fever of the soul—
They seek to find in those they love
Stern strength, and promise of control.
They ask not kindness, gentle ways;
These they themselves have tried and known:
They ask a soul which never sways
With the blind gusts that shake their own.
I too have felt the load I bore
In a too strong emotion’s sway;
I too have wish’d, no woman more,
This starting, feverish heart, away:
I too have long’d for trenchant force
And will like a dividing spear;
Have prais’d the keen, unscrupulous course,
Which knows no doubt, which feels no fear.
But in the world I learnt, what there
Thou too wilt surely one day prove,
That will, that energy, though rare,
Are yet far, far less rare than love.
Go, then! till Time and Fate impress
This truth on thee, be mine no more!
They will: for thou, I feel, not less
Than I, wast destin’d to this lore.
We school our manners, act our parts:
But He, who sees us through and through,
Knows that the bent of both our hearts
Was to be gentle, tranquil, true.
And though we wear out life, alas,
Distracted as a homeless wind,
In beating where we must not pass,
In seeking what we shall not find;
Yet we shall one day gain, life past,
Clear prospect o’er our being’s whole;
Shall see ourselves, and learn at last
Our true affinities of soul.
We shall not then deny a course
To every thought the mass ignore;
We shall not then call hardness force,
Nor lightness wisdom any more.
Then, in the eternal Father’s smile,
Our sooth’d, encourag’d souls will dare
To seem as free from pride and guile,
As good, as generous, as they are.
Then we shall know our friends: though much
Will have been lost—the help in strife;
The thousand sweet still joys of such
As hand in hand face earthly life;—
Though these be lost, there will be yet
A sympathy august and pure;
Ennobled by a vast regret,
And by contrition seal’d thrice sure.
And we, whose ways were unlike here,
May then more neighbouring courses ply;
May to each other be brought near,
And greet across infinity.
How sweet, unreach’d by earthly jars,
My sister! to behold with thee
The hush among the shining stars,
The calm upon the moonlit sea.
How sweet to feel, on the boon air,
All our unquiet pulses cease;
To feel that nothing can impair
The gentleness, the thirst for peace—
The gentleness too rudely hurl’d
On this wild earth of hate and fear:
The thirst for peace a raving world
Would never let us satiate here.
IV
Isolation. To Marguerite
We were apart: yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be;
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee:
Nor fear’d but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day more tried, more true.
The fault was grave: I might have known,
What far too soon, alas, I learn’d—
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith is often unreturn’d.—
Self-sway’d our feelings ebb and swell:
Thou lov’st no more: Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment did’st depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign,
Back to thy solitude again!
Back, with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame,
When she forsook the starry height
To hang over Endymion’s sleep
Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep;—
Yet she, chaste queen, had never prov’d
How vain a thing is mortal love,
Wandering in Heaven, far remov’d.
But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth—to prove, and make thine own:
Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.
Or, if not quite alone, yet they
Which touch thee are unmating things—
Ocean, and Clouds, and Night, and Day;
Lorn Autumns and triumphant Springs;
And life, and others’ joy and pain,
And love, if love, of happier men.
Of happier men—for they, at least,
Have dream’d two human hearts might blend
In one, and were through faith releas’d
From isolation without end
Prolong’d, nor knew, although not less
Alone than thou, their loneliness.
V
To Marguerite—Continued
Yes: in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour;
Oh then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent.
Now round us spreads the watery plain—
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
God, a God their severance rul’d;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
VI
Absence
In this fair stranger’s eyes of grey
Thine eyes, my love, I see.
I shudder: for the passing day
Had borne me far from thee.
This is the curse of life: that not
A nobler calmer train
Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot
Our passions from our brain;
But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok’d souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.
I struggle towards the light; and ye,
Once-long’d-for storms of love!
If with the light ye cannot be,
I bear that ye remove.
I struggle towards the light; but oh,
While yet the night is chill,
Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow,
Stay with me, Marguerite, still!
VII
The Terrace at Berne
(Composed Ten Years After the Preceding)
Ten years!—and to
